Myths of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Gervais Group
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There’s much that is misunderstood regarding search engine optimization (SEO) including some myths that have been dispelled but seem to carry on anyway. Here are a few of them:
1) New content always helps improve rankings on search engine results pages – New content might increase the frequency of spiders returning to a site but it’s not going to do much for rankings if it’s not relevant. Optimized new content that isn’t stuffed with keywords will help, especially if done consistently.
2) Meta tags must be rich with keywords to help with rankings – One of the early black hat techniques stuffed irrelevant keywords into meta tags. Once the search engines figured it out, they classified the tags as spam and don’t give points for it anymore. Meta titles and descriptions do help with rankings
3) For search engine optimization (SEO) to be effective it must be submitted to the search engines repeatedly – Not true, the spiders are what count now. Search engine optimization, when properly executed and marketed, is very effective regardless of submissions.
4) Flash kills search engine optimization – Flash doesn’t kill SEO; it just doesn’t score with the search engines. Where flash hurts is when it is relied on exclusively. The spiders don’t read it so if there’s nothing to index there’s a problem. That being said, a little flash never hurt anyone.
5) A site that isn’t getting much traffic doesn’t need search engine optimization or marketing – Well, it may not be getting any visitors because it’s doing neither of these activities to drive traffic to the website in the first place.
6) Buying links will get a site banned – Black hat techniques used to manipulate the rankings can get a site banned but buying links isn’t considered to be one of those practices. If crawlers determine the link is paid, it won’t count the votes from that link but that’s a lot better than being banned.
7) SEO has failed if the site doesn’t rank as a number one – For search engine optimization to be effective, it must deliver a return on investment. That return can be wiped out if optimization isn’t cost effective, which can be the case in going after number one rankings. Due to the drop-off from page one to page two on all search engines, a page one ranking is important, but a cost effective ranking in the seventh spot is much better than budget busting number one ranking.
The one thing that will always be true about SEO is that it is constantly evolving. The algorithms and the general environment can change so quickly that what might be true today could end up on someone else’s “list of myths” tomorrow. The other possibility is that the myths written about today become truths at some point in the future, so stay tuned.
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Good insights. Although a little negative.
Hey, great post, very well written. You should post more about this.
Personally I love the quote below:
“Optimized new content that isn’t stuffed with keywords will help, especially if done consistently”
It’s something I always have to tell clients. If you write content well and often you don’t need to worry about filling it with keywords. It will happen organically if you just talk about your topic thoroughly enough.
I will however make note that your #4 isn’t entirely accurate. Flash can work with some text as long as it’s a specific manner. On top of that Bing is stating that they can crawl, read, and index flash as if it were a regular page. This is according to their “Guide for Webmasters” PDF they published at the beginning of the month. I have been unable to figure out how they are able to do this.
Hello. Thank you for this great info! Keep up the good job!
thank you! I really liked this post!